Despite uptick and population growth, county voter registration and turnout numbers stagnant

This week, we published a story about Harris County having the highest number of registered voters it has seen in several years.

While that is true, County Attorney Vince Ryan sent over an interesting chart that shows that the number of registered voters — and voter turnout — has remained surprisingly stagnant for the last 15 years, despite explosive population growth.

In 2010, for example, when the county was home to 4.1 million residents, there were 1.94 million registered voters — the same as there were last year. In 2000, when the county population was 3.4 million, there were 1.89 million registered voters — a little bit more than there were during the last municipal election in 2011.

As of Monday, the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election, 1.98 million Harris County residents were registered — 100,000 more than in 2011.

The last time the number of registered voters cracked 1.9 million was last year’s general election, when the county had 1.94 million registered voters.

One Response

Possible that our net growth has been among non-citizens, or persons younger than 18, while the mostly Anglo, older cadre of voters is moving out or dying out. The relevant numbers for comparison would be the CVAP data from the US Census, adults who hold US citizenship. An online scholarly report states that 2000 CVAP was 1964970, while 2009 CVAP for Harris County was 2281093, an increase of 16%. (rather than the 20% increase the total population data show)

Another issue might be whether the registration lists in the past had more inaccuracies, deceased voters, persons who had long ago moved out of Harris County, etc. Looking at the 2000 data, it would seem unlikely that in 2009/2010 when we had about 1.96 million adults in the county who were citizens, that 1.89 million of them in 2010 had registered to vote, without the list having lots of duplicates or stale registrations. That would be an extraordinarily high level of registration compliance.